Joyas Voladoras

Josie Mendez-Negrete’s novel, Las Hijas de Juan: Daughters Betrayed, is a very disturbing tale about brutal domestic abuse and incest.  Negrete’s novel is an autobiography regarding experiences of incest in a working-class Mexican American family.  It is Josie Mendez-Negrete’s story of how she, her siblings, and her mother survived years of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of her father.  “Las Hijas de Juan" is told chronologically, from the time Mendez-Negrete was a child until she was a young adult trying, along with the rest of her family, to come to terms with her father 's brutal legacy. It is a upsetting story of abuse and shame compounded by cultural and linguistic isolation and a system of patriarchy that devalues the

“Joyas Voladoras” is a poetic essay written by Brian Doyle. This essay is about the heart, big and small. The hummingbirds have the smallest heart while the blue whale has the biggest. Doyle is trying to tell us readers a message. The message he is telling us is that our (mammals, birds, reptiles, etc) hearts are strong and amazing, but fragile. We have to be careful what we do.

His survival is heavily influenced by every choice he makes, from ignoring the exhortations to escape impending danger to choosing to stay with his father in spite of difficulties. His experience with the Holocaust directly shapes his role as a frontline fighter for recognition of Holocaust victims. In moving to Canada, I also shaped my role in society. My skills, such as playing sports; hobbies, such as reading; and characteristics, such as persistence and studious attitude have all developed due to my moving to Canada. My exposure to a life so plentiful in opportunities has also caused me to take many things for granted. Events in people’s lives shape who they become. Some of these circumstances are brought about by the decisions of others, while the majority of occurrences are caused by deliberate choices. These decisions can shape destiny in a life-or-death situation or a can be like a small, yet equally profound, choice to smile at a stranger. While some decisions are out of one’s hands, a conscious effort to have a positive outlook on life can still influence destiny. Like a rudder, daily decisions made with a positive mentality can steer people to a prosperous life. It does not do well to dwell on what may have happened, but rather on how the life one creates can be consequential in further extending the development of

Annie Dillard created a relationship between each of the segments of “Living Like Weasels”. The relationship between the segments is chronological. In the first two segments Dillard introduces the behavior of the weasel and the small town she lives in. Dillard sets up the scenario in which she encountered a weasel in the wild. In sections two and three Annie Dillard tells the story of when she first saw the weasel. She emphasizes is the intensity of the weasel and her eye contact. The eye contact makes her think more in depth about the weasel what kind of animal they are. Then in section three and four Dillard describes how humans should be like weasels. Weasels live mindlessly and do not waste their time on unimportant things. Rather they focus themselves on one necessity and pursue that necessity at all costs. Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” flows chronologically. The paper starts by describing weasels, then Dillard talks about her encounter with a weasel and how it occurred, and finally she talks about why people should use weasels as an example of how to live.

Humans generally face struggles in their lifetime. Such struggles could be within themselves or with someone or something else but commonly stem from some sort of opposition in lifestyle. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi’s passion for personal survival conflicts with his moral obligations to himself internally, morphing his external character.

Our Life is a matter of choices. Live well and have faith and it will never go wrong. Our lives can be full of crazy ups and downs that shape our views on how life should be lived. With a similar ideology, author Flannery O’Connor’s depicts her own life struggles using different aspects and details throughout her novels and short stories. O’Connor lived by the basis that life must go on no matter the hardships. In her novels she represented various characters who made wrong choices and due to those choices suffered extreme negative consequences. Despite her struggles, O’Connor made the choice to continue on in her life yet many of her novels contradicted that same idea by having characters in her novels and short stories suffer consequences for making the wrong choices. Because the

In her essay “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard explores the idea of following a single calling in life, and attaching one’s self it this calling as the weasel on Ernest Thompson Seton’s eagle had. Dillard presents her argument using the analogy of a weasel and how the; “weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (Dillard). In constructing her argument, however, she often contradicts herself undermining the effectiveness of her argument and leaving the reader confused. Dillard primarily uses ethos and pathos to support her argument and concerning both, the reader discovers; inconsistencies in her character, and conflicts between her perceptions of the weasel’s emotions and its actions. Concerning her ethos, Dillard presents herself as a part of suburbia and then is suddenly, inexplicably overcome by the desire to live wild. Dillard also uses very detailed language throughout the essay in describing her surroundings and thoughts, however; this further undermines her argument and ethos as she is trying to convince the reader that she could simply become as simple and single minded as the weasel she has focused her argument around. With her use of pathos, Dillard begins her essay with descriptions of the weasel’s brutality, yet; she concludes by stating the weasel lives as is necessary. By simplifying her experience and presenting a reasonable explanation for why she wanted to

To simply be alive consists of the acts of breathing and having blood pump through the body, but to be a human being consists of much more complexity. The nature composed of a human being involves having self sovereignty on our own emotions, opinions, desires, faiths as well as having a moral subconscious. Yet, what occurs when a situation allows an individual to react in a behaviour that doesn’t follow these defining factors of human nature? In Yann Martel 's Life of Pi, he creates the conflict of a cargo ship sinking, and the only notable survivors on the life raft consists of a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a 16-year-old Indian boy. The protagonist of the novel, Pi Patel, is faced with a personal survival conflict

Throughout “Joyas Voladoras” the idea that the heart is valuable and beautiful is shown in this short story a multitude of times through the metaphors. Life is promoted as such a glorious thing and not everything gets to live for as long as it would like, factors play in and life ends. Muscles and organs fail, and the body can fix itself, but when the heart fails or breaks it can no longer be fixed. Doyle shows the reader that the size or shape of a creature does not matter and that we are all connected through the one thing that we have in common: a

Brian Doyle's lyrical essay Joyas Voladoras explores both the structure and paradox of the heart and no matter the size or shape the heart is an important part of life. Doyle first speaks of the humming-bird comparing its heart to an engine, that their heart is a power house of energy. That said their fast pace live come at a great cost as Brian Doyle states that humming birds “ suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature” (292). The solution would be to slow down but even the most shortest rest birds the "flying Jewels" closer to death, so what the heart need can also be its down fall. One of my favorite statements that Doyle makes is about the how a heart has " approximately two billion heart beats to spend in a life time"(292).

Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” exhibits the mindless, unbiased, and instinctive ways she proposes humans should live by observing a weasel at a nearby pond close to her home. Dillard encounters about a sixty second gaze with a weasel she seems to entirely connect with. In turn, this preludes a rapid sequence of questions and propositions about “living as we should”. Unfortunately, we tend to consume our self with our surroundings and distractions in life, which is not a problem until we are blatantly told. How have we strayed so far from our once instinctive lifestyle?

From the viewpoint of a detached outsider, the discrepancies of human life are seemingly simplistic and, to an extent, comical as seen in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Our constant turmoil and strife due to trivial standards can be seen as humorous to even the most unamused. However, a deeper insight into the way in which we view life itself reveals a more profound understanding of the world around us.

I guess this little anecdote begins to illustrate a couple of my basic life principles. A concise explanation of how I look at the world is just this: We humans, as

Life is like life as you know it. I am pretty noted that you are very perplexed in what I am saying, probably even baffle as you might say. In reality, what I mean is that a person is very comparable to nature itself . Where we are determined to have happiness, like the flowers rising and sprouting every time they see their friend the sun. We are determined to change for the better, like a caterpillar cocooning to be part of the next immense change, a butterfly. We are determined to never give up, like a bear grasping for fish in the running river to just to eat. The bear does not stop till it gets what it needs. We are determined to love and trust, like a mother loving her child and her child, giving trust to their mother to take care of them. You know life is like life as you know it, but how?

La noche era lúgubre, se veían las estrellas y el cielo como la mar. El aire era espeso, era casi imposible respirar. Se escuchaban gritos, (alaridos escalofriantes). Eran desgarradores. Yo tan solo era un estro atrapado en un cubo de cristal. Un día estaba yo buscando la inspiración, ¡me encontré con personas muy interesantes!, personas que llegaron a satisfacer mis placeres más íntimos, aprendí un poco más del mundo, me penetré en los más perturbados pensamientos, entendí en muchos esa singularidad con la que tocan, me fascinaba tocar, sentir, observar cada rincón con mis dedos, mi boca. Me daba curiosidad el saber cómo se sienten mis caricias, me sentía deslumbrada con cada gesto, cada gota de sudor diáfano, cada susurro, miles de sentimientos encontrados. Pero aun así, me sentía vacía, no encontraba en ellos lo que buscaba mi instinto y aún me sigo preguntando qué es lo que busco realmente ¿Será la inspiración? , Soy una mujer muy joven, una inadaptada ansiosa, deseosa por aprender todos los días algo nuevo; diferente, que tal vez parezca común al verse de pasada, ¡Pero es la vida! y a veces la ignoramos y vivimos todo el tiempo dormidos soñando con vivir, soñando con amar, sentir. Soy una mujer joven que quiere sentir, vivir, una mujer que intenta despertar, y todo el tiempo me encuentro disfrutando de cada placer. No digo que sea malo soñar, al contrario, creo que si